Where do you keep your money? Maybe not the bank, in these interesting times… Where do you keep money in your house?
Yesterday, I had to lay my hands on a reasonable sum of cash for someone who would be coming to the door in a short time, and could not be put off (or paid by cheque). I was not able to reach a cash machine in the time remaining. Even with the entire contents of my wallet and the obvious domestic financial kitties I was still a few quid short.
Where do you go to find that extra money? I quickly raided all the obvious bits and bobs depositories round the house - still not enough. Every handbag I could find was emptied, and every coat pocket explored - just pennies. The fluff collector in the washing machine produced 5p, and I discovered 2p by the back door that the kids had dug up in the garden. Now where? I was horribly conscious of the kids’ piggy banks staring down at me - but raiding them seemed like the lowest of the low - keep that as a last resort.
Come on, there must be some money somewhere! The bottom of the pen pot, the hall table, emptied my wallet one more time. I poured out the kids’ play money and found nothing but a measly one pence piece. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking and time is running out, I’m thinking more and more about taking a knife to the slot in those piggy banks when, oh joy of joys, I remembered the swear box. The old swear box which had fallen out of use (and we didn’t use it for swearing either, but for other unsavoury practices - not as yeuch as it sounds, though) - and there. forgotten in the bottom was an entire 50p piece. I felt so rich! never has 50p seemed so much. Combined with the scraped together pennies I was well in the clear.
But I couldn’t help feeling that I woman of my mature years shouldn’t find herself scrabbling about so desperately for change - or does this happen to other people?
Happens all the time here. Particularly when the window cleaner calls in. I raid the piggy banks, quite unashamedly. That’s getting more difficult though as their pocket money now bypasses the piggy and goes straight to the bank. And why, can you tell me, do the window cleaners never have any change when they only take cash?
I’m afraid you will now have to go and listen again to Monday evening’s The Archers. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00dncjj
I only listened to it after I posted the comment above. Right, that’s me ‘fessed up.
Ha! My money-collector was not from the bookies! Do you know, down the sofa was one place I didn’t look? I’ve always thought of that as a particularly male way of losing loose money from a trouser pocket, so it didn’t occur to me…
Can’t say on your first question - windowcleaners are a mystery to me as I don’t use them - although they often get their door/window connections mixed up and demand money off me for my neighbour’s house! It’s happened so often that I now rather enjoy winding them up. I guess the franchise must change hands pretty frequently? But not mid-session, though that would explain the change problem.
Is it that they really do have change but they’re hoarding it? What happens if you tell them it’s a tenner or nothing? At least the milkman has learnt to believe us if we say there’s no money in the house, and willcarry it over for a week - I hope your window-cleaner will do the same; after all, he knows where you live…
I have to admit to having pretended not to be in rather than greet the milkman yet again with the same lame apology.
Down the settee is the one place I’d definitely have looked in our house, and under it and behind it.
Our window cleaner is very cheap, not having changed his price since we moved here 10 years ago.. it’s not exploitation - I have offered to renegotiate but he is happy, so he says. Maybe he was expensive 10 years ago? I don’t know. But he too is well used to the “sorry no cash today” refrain.
I feel worst when it’s a charity collector who clearly makes all kinds of assumptions about my parsimony when all I can produce are some fluffy 1 pences and a bent euro.